May 9, 2003

A PACE mile marker — first pilot site goes live

April 16 represented a significant mile marker for the hundreds of MGH employees involved with the Patient Administrative Cycle Enhancements (PACE) project, aimed at improving the efficiency of the outpatient registration, insurance referral and hospital billing processes. Part of the Internal Medicine Associates (IMA) practice "went live," using the new PACE model for outpatient registration and referral processing. The launch has been successful.

The PACE model is a redesign of the front-end outpatient procedures to provide better customer service to patients and reduce payer rejections related to outpatient registration, eligibility and referral issues.

"The first day of using the model went extremely well, which is reflective of all the planning that went into the process," says Virginia Manzella, administrative director for IMA. "This really was a team effort. Our staff went through extensive training to prepare for PACE, and two of our lead secretaries, Maria Oliveira and Betty Traghella, were on PACE committees, working closely with the PACE project staff to implement the model into part of our practice."

The launch of the PACE model in the IMA also marked the first time that the PACE project's centralized contact center was used to take transferred calls from practice staff. Named the Registration and Referral Center (RRC), the contact center has a staff of 15 people who call patients to verify insurance and demographic information and process referrals in advance of patient visits. Using specialized computer and phone systems, the RRC will help reduce the burden of work on physician practice staff and make the overall patient experience easier and more pleasant. Patients will have their demographic and insurance information verified by registration specialists in the RRC approximately every six months.

"The contact center has state-of-the-art technology that was designed especially for this project, so going live with the IMA was a perfect opportunity to test out the system and address any issues," says Diane Gardner, director of the RRC. "In the first week, we met our service goal of having 90 percent of the calls answered in 16 seconds, so we were quite pleased with the launch. We also received positive feedback from patients when we called them for registration and referral information."

Currently, the RRC staff is located at Ruth Sleeper Hall; with plans under way to move to a new location in Medford and to expand the staff capabilities.

For more information about the PACE project, send an e-mail to PACEProject@partners.org.